Microphone Choices:

GETTIN' SQUIRRELLY!...

Even from the relative comfort and safety of the venerable HARPMOBILE, it's easy to see the unending and ever-changing variety of EFX crops that can be harvested from the STOMPBOX TREE. From the major branches-sprouting all those bargain basement through high-dollar echo and reverb pedals-we let our eyes follow up and out toward the fringes, where the branches become mere twigs, the traffic is lighter, and the sounds emanating from some of these EFX units are hard to describe, identify, or name. This is where the sound gets SQUIRRELLY. A sense of adventure is a distinct advantage should you chose to venture out here. Let's face it: Most straight-up Tin Sandwich jockeys professing to be apostles of the Blues wouldn't even consider going any farther "out on a limb" than the more well-traveled EFX branches where the more familiar REVERB and ECHO crops are hanging. "Traditional" isn't a word you'd associate with gear carrying labels like "harmonizer," "octave pedal," or "phase-shifter." SQUIRRELLY...

EFX dealing with pitch shifting, splitting, and frequency modifying gained a public foothold when CONN Instruments, America's oldest continuous maker of musical instruments and known for their work with brass and woodwind gear, went out into the electro-tech world with the CONN Multi Vider in 1967. The 914 could run a wind instrument through its circuitry via a microphone and yield signals an octave up, down, or two down from the source signal. Saxophonist Eddie Harris was a heavy trader in the Multi Vider sound in the early '70's. Later simplified versions of these "octave boxes" (like the BOSS OC2) were more mission-specific in generating sub-octaves. My first personal experience hearing this type effect cross-pollinated with our Tin Sandwich was seeing/hearing Lee Oskar playing with WAR in Honolulu, Hawaii in the mid-'80's. He had his Beyer ribbon mic running through an octave splitter stompbox (make unknown) on stage via LOW-Z/HI-Z transformers. The "POP" that the lower octaves added to his melodies was quite startling.

The technology that developed from this beginning to not just split but harmonize with an input signal began moving from the multi-thousand dollar studio rack units (Eventide, T.C.) into the fingers and onto the floor by way of multi-effects units (ZOOM, Digitech, Roland) and more job specific boxes (Digitech's Vocalist Live 4, Boss VT-1). Imagine a single harp sounding like a horn section...

THE BIG SWIRL: FLANGING and PHASING are related but distinct from each other by composition of their waveforms. Perhaps the easiest way to differentiate between the two would be to describe FLANGING as having the sound of a jet fly-by added to the swirl of the PHASING effect. FLANGING, two identical source-signals running microseconds apart in fluctuating intervals, producing an even harmonic series. With PHASING, the harmonic intervals tend to be of an un-even nature. These swirling sounds can be heard in the 1967-release "Itchycoo Park" by the Small Faces, and in what is perhaps its first popular example, "The Big Hurt", recorded in 1959 by Miss Tony Fisher at Gold Star Studios in Hollywood. Originally accomplished using two tape machines, the Maestro Phase-Shifter of the early '70's made the effect portable and was followed onto the floor in stompbox form by the MXR Phase 90, 100, and a host of other makes and models, all intent on messing with our sense of space and time. Used sparingly (and with a consciously adjusted EQ), they can help paint dimensional and sonic textures that otherwise simply aren't possible...

EFX HOME STRETCH / BACK TO THE MIC DUNGEON! - Next time we visit...THE MICBENCH

YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED (Email them to me at HARPMICMAN@earthlink.net)

For pictures and descriptions of most of the microphones listed visit http://www.harmonicamasterclass.com/vintage_collection.htm